The most important relationship anyone can have is with your own body. Your body is your vehicle to move through life and accomplish all the things that you want to do. However, your body requires constant communication throughout every system in order to maintain balance or better known in the scientific community as homeostasis. There is physical communication, chemical communication, and energetic communication happening at all times in our body. Unfortunately, we have become good at ignoring our body’s communication methods and often try to override our communication systems pushing ourselves to work harder or endure some pain or discomfort. This is really detrimental to our body’s wellbeing.

The first form of communication that our body uses is the nervous system. The nervous system provides direct communication from our body to our brain and then back to our body in closed electrical loops following specific nerve pathways. I relate the nervous system to telephone wires (if you still remember the times before cell phones) you pick up the phone on one end and talk to the person directly on the other. There are basically two parts to the nervous system, sensory input and motor output. The sensory nervous system detects information from the world around you or changes that are happening inside your body. That information is sent through nerves to your brain to be interpreted. Once your brain interprets those signals the brain sends signals back out to the body creating a motor response.  

For example if you touch a hot stove your body’s first reflexive instinct is to withdraw your hand from the stove before you burn yourself. Those reflexes are designed to help protect you from harm. Another example is if you smell something cooking in the kitchen, your mouth will start to water as you prepare to eat. The secretion of saliva from your salivary glands comes from a motor response from your brain to have the tiny little muscle cells start contracting to push the saliva out of the cells and down into your mouth. Vision will also create motor responses. Ever see something scary and have the hairs on your neck stand up? Little muscles are causing those hairs to move. Keeping your nervous system healthy and communicating properly is very important if you want your body to stay healthy.

The second form of communication that our body uses is a chemical communication from our hormones. Hormones are just tiny little chemical signals that are secreted by glands that travel through our blood stream and lymphatic fluids to reach target tissues to elicit a physiological change within our body. It is very much like the mail system. The mail system has many different post offices, which hold letters. Those letters are then sent out to the different houses based on the address on the letter. Once the letter reaches the house the letter is read and the homeowner can respond. Sometimes the workers at the post office will go on strike and there will be no letters being delivered. Just like with the mail system, there can be breakdowns in the communication pathways in the body as well. This is similar to your gland shutting down and not putting out any hormones. Sometimes the mailman will bring too many mail order catalogs to your house and you get overwhelmed by all that is being sent, and you throw the catalogs away before you even look at them; this is similar to having too much hormone in your body.  Sometimes when the mailman delivers the mail the homeowner has gone away on vacation and the mail is just sitting in the mailbox. This can cause the bills to not be paid and then your services can be shut off.

So with hormone problems your body can have too much signal, not enough signal or a dysfunctional gland not sending a signal out at all. To evaluate hormone problems a thorough investigation is required because many things will affect the chemical balance in the body. This includes your diet, the amount of exercise you are getting or not getting, the amount of sleep you get at night or your stress levels, just to name a few.

The third form of communication is your body’s acupuncture system. There are many energy pathways called meridians in your body that also help your body communicate. The acupuncture system works like the wireless internet in that you can’t see it but you know it is there when you turn on your cell phone and want to send a text message. When it doesn’t work you can be very frustrated and it causes miscommunications. Acupuncturists have been using the meridian system of the body for 6000 years helping to maintain the health and wellbeing of their patients. The energy systems are very subtle but they create your bioelectric field. We all know we have this electric field every time we get shocked by static electricity. Proper energy balance is difficult to understand if you are not an acupuncturist, but it is affected by your movement, your physiology and how your body functions. The healthier you are the better your energy flows, deep breathing, good sleep, proper nutrition, and walking with a good cross crawl pattern (swinging your arms and walking purposefully, not shuffling) all will affect your energy balance.

Maintaining your body’s communication pathways is essential for optimal health and wellbeing. Lifestyle choices play a big part in keeping your body communicating at its highest levels. When your communication breaks down that is when your body becomes sick. The difference in treatments arises from how far your body has progressed from dysfunction to pathology. The further along a pathology like cancer the more aggressive the treatments need to be with drugs or surgery. Catching problems early and treating them conservatively will keep your body healthy. Your Chiropractor, Naturopath, Acupuncturist, Massage Therapist and Wellness Coaches can all be good resources to keep your body on the straight and narrow. Maintaining healthy communication within your body will make the relationship with your body strong and keep you living healthy, naturally and optimally.